When you're watching G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra and the Cobra Command is tearing up the Eiffel Tower with its laser beams, you probably won't be thinking about the writing. It's an eye candy movie for sure, but somebody did write not only the catch phrases the heroic Joes say, but the very action sequences themselves.

Beattie began researching Joe in 2000 for a different set of filmmakers. It paid off when he finally got the job last year. "Really, I'd been familiar with it for about nine years before I wrote it," he said. "I think stories and movies come out best when you think about them for a long time. I'd just been thinking about the world and the characters and all that in the back of my mind. So once the call came in, it was very easy to just slip right in and start doing it. I knew what the movie had to be and what parameters I had to stay within and what lines I could not cross."

His un-produced scripts may be as interesting as his hits. Beattie wrote a script for a Halo movie which, as of now, has no studio attached. While scouting locations for Tomorrow, When the War Began., Beattie made time for an international call. He stayed on the phone for a half hour to geek out about '80s toys, video games and pirates.

Fred Topel: How do you approach adapting a toy line and cartoon as opposed to the theme park ride you adapted with Pirates of the Caribbean?

Stuart Beattie: You know, it's much the same. You take it very seriously. I think you can get inspiration or use as source material anything for a movie, as long as you take it as seriously as you would any other kind of source material. So as I did with Pirates, I looked at G.I. Joe and I said, "Okay, well, if this organization was to really exist in the world, how would it really exist? What would it do and who would be the kind of people that would be the operatives and how would the command structure run? What kind of missions would they be sent on and who would they go up against?" I really just try and ground it in as much reality as I can for me, to make it so that it really could be real. I mean, the movie ultimately is a fantasy piece but I kind of approach it from the point of view that you have to take these things for real. They have to be serious and that, to me, is the best way to get emotional truth out of the characters and out of the situations so that when you get these fantastical sequences, they have this element of real truth to them which is what I think makes them interesting. With real truth becomes believability. With believability comes investing with the characters, caring about what happens in the big fantastical sequence because you're invested in these characters. It all comes from that place of truth for me, no matter what the source material. I just take it very seriously. That's the best I can tell you I think.

FT: If you read interviews with the actors, they all say they have to overact. Where does that come from?

SB: I would imagine that's from Stephen. They're portraying characters that I guess are larger than life in the sense that they've been around for 20, 30 years. There's a kind of iconic value to them. So you'd probably have to talk to Stephen about that but it all works with the tone of it and everything. So maybe it's just that there are a lot of characters in there, so you've got to kind of really make your mark I guess and really deliver something interesting. Maybe that's what they're talking about.

FT: Did you have any guidelines or restrictions from Hasbro?

SB: I actually didn't, although after the movie I was given the guidelines, but during my experience of writing it, I was writing it right before the writer's strike. So I really didn't have time to go to Hasbro and get the speech or anything. I just kind of wrote what I thought would be a really great summer action movie and stayed away from obvious things, like I knew I didn't want the G.I. Joes to be bad or be corrupt or have a mole within. If you grow up with G.I. Joe, you kind of know the basic elements and you know what line not to cross. So I just kind of stayed within those lines because I wanted to make sure that it was first and foremost a G.I. Joe movie. I didn't want it to feel like a Jason Bourne movie or a James Bond movie or any other kind of movie. I wanted it to be strictly G.I. Joe. I was very familiar with the property before I came onto it so I knew the parameters already.

FT: Did you know this from your own childhood or from your kids?

SB: No, because I grew up in Australia so I knew of G.I. Joe but I never played with any of the G.I. Joe action figures. My knowledge of the property came in 2000, nine years ago when I was originally approached by another set of producers, another whole incarnation to write the movie of G.I. Joe. They sent me the whole bible and all the comics and all that kind of stuff. I just really got into it then. That thing, that iteration of the project obviously never came to fruition and I never really did anything with it but, the material I kept because I knew it was fun and interesting. So I had all that stuff on my shelf when I got the call from Lorenzo [di Bonaventura - Producer] in mid-September saying, "We need you to write a movie." So I pulled all that stuff off the shelf and I was right back into it.

FT: When did black suits come into the design?

SB: That would've been some time in pre-production. It would've been the choice of Stephen and the costume designer. I'm not sure. I delivered the script, literally delivered the script on the day before the strike. We went on strike. The strike lasted the entire length of the pre-production and then the strike ended on the first day of shooting, actually the day before the first day of shooting. So I missed the whole pre-production so I assume that that stuff came up somewhere in those three or four months.

FT: Is it true you worked lines like "Kung Fu Grip" and "Sold Separately" into the script?

SB: I didn't get "sold separately" in although I should've. I did get "kung fu grip." "Lifelike hair" was the other one. "Lifelike hair" and "Kung fu grip," they're the famous taglines on the G.I. Joe products. You have to get them in. You have to get in "Knowing's half the battle" and there were certain things, like I say, to make it a G.I. Joe movie you've got to get them in. You've got to get certain characters in. you've got to get certain relationships in. You've got to get certain vehicles in. They're the kind of basic elements you need to really make it a G.I. Joe movie.

FT: What are the crazy set pieces you just wanted to see in a movie?

SB: To me it kind of falls under the loose banner of anything that I have not seen before, and I think audiences are starving for originality. I know I certainly am so I kind of take the premise: if I've seen it before, then I don't want to do it. I want to do something that I haven't seen before in the hopes that no one else has seen anything like this before. In the hopes that that will give people a real kick. I couldn't say, "Oh, I wanted to see a chase on the streets of Paris" or "I wanted to see a convoy attack" or whatever it was. It would be things like I come first from a place of story and what's the next thing that needs to happen here in the story. Then I'd think okay, now what's a really cool way to do that that I haven't seen before? What's a great way to execute that that I haven't seen before?

FT: What made Tomorrow, When the War Began the right film for you to direct?

SB: Several factors. Firstly, I wanted it to be Australian. Secondly, I wanted it to be in a genre that I knew it would be an interesting movie to see. I wasn't interested in doing kind of the bleak urban drama that we do a lot of down here. I was interested more in doing a fun piece, a commercial piece. Then, thirdly, I was looking for something that had great characters. Of course, the two never really go together. I don't have the budget to do what we did on G.I. Joe so it's a much, much, much smaller budget but it's enough to deliver a good, exciting action movie. It just has all those elements that are really terrific and just what I was looking for.

FT: What happened with Halo and why hasn't anybody made that movie yet?

SB: That was actually something, I'm just a Halo fan basically and I always had very specific views on what I thought the movie should be. When that [Peter Jackson/Neil Blomkamp] iteration of Halo kind of ended, Fox and Universal pulled out and the project went dead, I was just relieved. And then I went on strike and I had nothing to do so I thought well, why don't I use the time to put my money where my mouth is and just write the Halo script that I would've always wanted to write, never with the intention of selling it. I just really wanted to write something that I would love writing but I would never get a chance to do any other time. So I sat down and I wrote this script. Then after the strike ended, I just started inquiring, 'What's going on, what's going on?' I just heard Microsoft said that it was just sitting there and no one was doing anything with it. It's a wonderful story, the movie based on the "The Fall of Reach" which is the prequel to the first game. It's just something that I have on my shelf and I'm just constantly pushing.

FT: We'd like to see a great video game movie. There may have been a few good ones but really no great ones. What do you think it will take?

SB: You know, I think we have to wait a few years for that. My theory on the whole video game adaptation is that the people in charge making movies based on video games don't play the video games and don't know the video games and don't love the video games. So we have to wait a few years until the people who do play video games and love them are the ones kind of in charge and calling the shots. I think it's kind of like how we had to wait for the Sam Raimis of the world to get into a position where they were powerful enough to make the movies of the comic books that they grew up on and they loved. That's when we got great comic book movies. So I just think because video games are like 10, 15 years behind comic books, we have to wait for those of us who love video games and specific games to get enough clout to be the ones making those movies. We love those games, cherish those games and respect those games. One day, yeah, someone will really make a terrific Halo movie. Hopefully it's me or hopefully it's sooner and it's someone else.

FT: So to be clear, you weren't involved with the Peter Jackson project?

SB: Not at all, no. I had nothing to do with that. This was just something, after that went away and was done and totally finished, I had some time on my hands because I was on strike and I'm a fan and I happen to write screenplays.

FT: What's your process? Do you keep a regimented schedule?

SB: I very much keep banker's hours. It's very important to me to work Monday through Friday and 9 to 6 and be on time with most of the world and take my kids to school, go to the games on the weekends and live life. I think life informs everything that you write. Even if nothing's coming, I'll sit there and I'll write crap. Writing crap's better than writing nothing. At least with crap, you've got something to work with the next day. Like okay, well, that's crap. I can do better than that. The terrifying thing is the blank page, so whatever you have to do to get past the blank page, that's the process. I start at page one every day. Every day I start at page one because I can't write page two until I know I've done page one the best that I can, because I think if I write a great page two and page one sucks, then I might have to change page two.

FT: So you rewrite as you go?

SB: Oh yeah, every day. Start at page one, and it also gives me confidence to go and write page two if I'm like, "Oh, page one, pretty good."

FT: Some writers just wait until they're finished and go back to revise.

SB: Right, see, that's not me because I would worry that I did something wrong on page one and every other page after that just does not work anymore. So I want to know that all the work I've done previously is the best that it can be before I do the next part so that I don't get into that trap. It's just a personal thing. That's just how I do it.

FT: You helped create a monster with Pirates. What were your thoughts on how that series progressed?

SB: Oh, you know, God bless, good luck. I think it's a really fun world. I kind of feel if anything like it's just more justification really. I was hammering Disney for 10 years to make that movie. I just loved that the first movie turned out so well that the world really embraced this series of movies. If they want to keep making them and everyone's happy to make them and they're good quality, there's nothing I can say. God bless, good luck and it's great.

FT: Would you consider taking a crack at another one?

SB: I wouldn't personally, no, just because I kind of crave in my personal work doing things that I haven't done before. Especially those films, they're so successful, I'd really probably only fail. But it's a world that I've traveled in a lot now, so I'd much rather leave it to other people and take on something fresh and new. They've offered me a lot of other toy movies, movies based on toy lines and I just keep turning them down. G.I. Joe was that movie for me. I invested everything I could in G.I. Joe. I wouldn't have anything left to invest in The Monopoly Game or the Viewfinder Game, whatever that they're doing. Movies are such an investment, such a personal investment. There's so much of your heart and soul in them that it's not something in a way you can repeat. You can't repeat it in the same world and all that. It's just a personal thing so I always need to be doing something fresh and something original.